As the cedar-strip canoe painting nears completion, I have been re-establishing its focal points.  Unquestionably, the deep-toned wood of the canoe dominates;  it is the bride of this event.  The bridesmaids take the form of  two long-dead cedar logs; maybe we should reconsider them as grandmothers. Truth be told, the bride is a bit long in the tooth herself.

Her first posthumous life began with Jon’s family forty-five years ago.  Bridie didn’t get a lot of use, perhaps because her first outing (in Algonquin Park) involved a snowstorm in August.  That consigned her to a spot in the backyard under an enormous oak which, when it succumbed to old age, landed on her.  Jon and I claimed the body and decided to fix the old gal.  The canvas skin was irreparable so we set out to fibreglass her.  I do not recommend this.  First of all, it added 15 pounds of weight and NOBODY wants a portly canoe. To make things worse, the process of fibreglassing killed the grass in our backyard;  we spent the next five years with a canoe-shaped dead zone. So Fatso is now a flat-water day-tripping kind of gal, redeemed only by the elegance of her lines and the transparent siennas of her hand-built frame.   Always a good girl, never fast.

Rounding out the wedding party are  the pale coltsfoot leaves (which I softened because I found them too strong) and dark but glowing river rocks.    Of tertiary interest, they are present but unobtrusive  and reward the eye with some low-key interest.  Check.

The biggest problem in this painting was unity.  The water near the canoe was so slow as to reflect blocks of sky;  further to the left, however, the current picks up and breaks the surface into myriad wavelets.  Thanks to the input of three dear friends, all of them good painters, I was reminded that the sky blue needed to be substantially present there as well.  They also reminded me that the bride sets the palette so the sienna needed to appear more often in the painting.   Check.

I think we are might be ready to head for the church.

I’m writing this with purple  hands in a steaming stone room.  It is going to 38 with humidex today and, alas,  my studio is outside of the house’s footprint.  There is an air-conditioning split just on the other side of this door but it exists only as an idea at this point.  So this blog will be a short one.

I write in praise of the person who developed the spineless blackberry.  We previously had raspberries and have the scars to prove it.  But four or five years ago I picked up a blackberry plant which boasted the absence of thorns.  This once, advertising proved correct!  The plant thrived, with seven foot arching and miraculously smooth canes you could roller-skate if you were so inclined.  It took five minutes this morning to pick a quart of black beauties and there are still hundreds more to ripen.

Frustrated gardener that I am, harvesting anything at all is a thrill, and to get blackberries without blood loss hits the jackpot.  So, to whomever the botanist is or was, I send sincere wishes for an eternity in paradise.  

This is one of my first paintings.  Jon and I were on an isolated island with limited subject matter so I stole the image from a card.  I always work from original digitals now but at the time at least I recognized a great composition.  It was the first time I had painted globes or any sort and this unripe pink berry made it clear that every rounded seed capsule had to be painted separately and given a spot of light.  Finding highlights whether on grapes or river stones thereafter became a happy hunt.

And now I am going to pull the rest of the leaves out of my pony tail and go to the kitchen to claim my prize.  Purple teeth and air conditioning ahoy.

It is high summer and life is in full swing.  Just as mysteriously as they disappeared last summer, the girls have reappeared in the old hollow cedar.  A few said hi, which makes me think that they belonged to the swarm that vacated the joint last summer;  perhaps it just divided and the new queen retrieved an ancestral memory of “home.”  There’s been so much rain that it must be hard to collect an adequate day’s portion of pollen but the amount of air traffic suggests otherwise.  What a relief to have them back.

And the bat population is rebounding!  Jon sees them down on the river at dusk and there is evidence of their sleeping quarters under the shutters and eaves.  We also hear them crossly chittering when wakened midday from a good dream.  We have been watching The Blue Planet again, whale-watching for hours.  Macro or micro, mammals rock.

Today we walked a wonderful conservation area and I shot a number of flower references to paint this winter.  Jon remarked that our own echinacea was pretty pathetic by comparison.  I stoutly defended our little survivors who have somehow photosynthesized enough to produce a few flowers in the shade.  Someday I hope to have a sunny garden plot.  But as a prairie kid who gardened in nothing but sun, I have to admit to a weakness for the deep forest.  Even orchards enchant.  The first time I saw edible apples - not crabapples, although they make great jelly - I was overcome with wonder.

Ever the cheap date.